


The Divine Lila

by Tammany



Series: The Sussex Downs [19]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angels, Community - Freeform, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Poker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 22:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20731739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Lila is not a name. I mean, it can be, obviously. But theologically, it's a concept...one quite alien to much of Christianity, especially in a non-conforming world. Puritans in Elizabeth and James' era indeed argued that God does not "play." Lila encompasses the entire universe at play with herself.Which is giving entirely too much away. But I could not for the life of me think of a better title for this little bit of Sussex Downs activity. Nothing that didn't feel too evasive and coy and fake-naive.Lila...Six thousand years since Eden. The world is a miracle, sometimes. Even for Angels and Demons.





	The Divine Lila

Out on the patio “the guys” are playing poker—five card draw, a classic. Greg, Crowley, John and, of all people, Janine. The guys.

They all suspect that if they made a point of inviting Mycroft and Sherlock and Aziraphale to play along, they’d be hung out to dry. Which is, of course, why they have pointedly failed to invite their companions to play along. Sometimes a guy wants to feel like a badass, even if you’re just badass enough to exclude the real badasses.

Mycroft is reading a novel up on the upper balcony, curled in a deep and capacious Papa San chair, long legs tucked neatly into the nest, a travel mug of tea resting in the curve of his waist, spout locked off between sips. He’s wearing sunscreen, sun glasses, and a hat, as well as a light linen outfit from Morocco he keeps wanting to call “pajamas,” even though they are not. Rosie and Sherlock are going to walk along the beach—Rosie sensibly wearing a life-jacket strapped carefully in place, because, as she told Crowley soberly, “I do not like the undertow, Uncle Demon.”

“Smart girl,” Crowley agreed, with admirable sobriety, as the little girl looked at him out of heaven-blue eyes. “You get a bit older and I’ll teach you to swim with the dolphins, you’ll be so good.”

“Can you do that?” John growled, as “Uncle Sherlie” and Rosie walked down the stairs to the beach below.

“Depends,” Crowley growled back. “Do you count great skills plus a few binding miracles?”

“Hard to discount,” John conceded, not sure what his opinion of all that should be. After all—between the supernatural itself, and Crowley’s status as a Demon (retired), and a quiet, ongoing sense of competition toward the lanky, opinionated arsehole, well… But then, on the other hand, miracles that worked were a lot harder to turn down than your average church-promoted miracles, which generally did not… In the end he settled for a slightly evasive “I’ll hold you to it.”

“You do that,” Crowley said, in a voice that suggested that, veteran of Afghanistan, “Army doctor” or no, he’d have a hell of a hard time holding the demon to anything. John found he didn’t really want to test that confidence.

So…four guys, a quiet reader, an uncle and his niece, all accounted for.

Aziraphale?

Wait for it. No one else knows where he is right now either. Why should you be privileged?  
  
“Ante up,” Janine says. She’s a player, she’s a player, she is soooo a player: low-riding visor hat, sunglasses hiding her eyes as well as Crowley’s did, fingers flashing as she shuffled and dealt with the panache of a casino dealer. “Pound to ante, 20p minimum bet.”

“Says who?” John grumbles.

“Says me. Gonna argue?”

“Yeah-yeah-yeah. Such a wise-arse. All right—one pound for the kitty. Crowley?”

“I’m in.” He pushed a one pound coin into the kitty, followed by Greg.

Janine nodded, shuffling the deck with lazy showmanship. “First bets, gentlemen? John?”

“Fifty p. Demon?”

“Fold.”

“Not even hold long enough for a draw?”

“Six thousand years teaches you nothing, if not to fold on a hand like this. Play on, mortals—play on.”

“Greg?”

“Fold.”

“Draw, John-John?”

“Call me that again and you can wash dishes tonight. No—I’m fine.”

Janine drew two, then spread her cards out on view. John tossed his hand down lightly, declaring “Full house.” Janine shrugged at her straight. She slipped the deck over to John as he collected the pot. “Your deal.”

John shuffled and dealt with precise, forceful style—none of Janine’s flourishes, but no hesitation either. “Ante up, people.”

They pushed pound coins forward.

“Where’s Aziraphale?” Greg asked. “We need more players.”

“Says the man who folded first round,” Janine jeered mildly.

“Yeah. I play like an old man. Need fresh blood.” Greg pretended ancient decrepitude. “A few nervy youngsters.”

“Six thousand years, infant,” Crowley drawled. “Angel’s good at maths. Good enough to scare the Inland Revenue. Makes odds leap through hoops.”

“Yeah-yeah. Get him in here so he can prove it.”

“No idea where he is. Not joined at the hip. Most of the time.” Crowley winked and smirked. “He went out this morning. Not back yet.”

“Crow-boy, it’s your bet,” Janine drawled, her cards tucked close to the scoop neckline of her tank top.

“Raise twenty p.” He pushed the coins into the center of the table.

“Fold,” Greg said, fanning his hand shut and leaning back in the big, cushioned wrought aluminum chair.

“Wuss,” Crowley whispered. Greg, sparkling with youthful mischief, stuck out his tongue.

“Raise two,” Janine said, pushing forward another 20 p. “John?”

“Pound. Cards?”

“One,” Crowley said, scowling at the cards from behind his sunglasses.

“Djinni?”

“Don’t call me that. I’ll keep what I have.”

John drew two cards, sighed, and flipped his cards over. “Between you two.” He displayed a pair of threes.

Crowley warily put down three of a kind—then crowed gleefully when Janine, too, proved to have only a pair…though a pair of queens. “Mine-mine-mine. Come to me, lovely money! And booze—massive amounts of booze. Greg, reach in the cooler and hand me a new long-neck?”

“IPA or brown?”

“IPA—bitter as the Fucking Archangel Gabriel.” He took the deck from John and proceeded to make it dance, cards flickering, arching, in cascades and fans and fancy work. “Never—NEVER ask Angel to shuffle. He’d drop the deck three times and then start to do magic tricks. Human magic tricks. It is to weep…”

“Why not just cheat and miracle the tricks?” Janine asked, as Crowley began to flip the cards down with crisp precision.

“Just what I say, Djinni. Just what I say. 'You’re an angel,' I say. 'You can work real magic. You can miracle things.' But nooooooo. ‘It’s not as fun.’ Fun! He would not know fun if it waddled up and bit him, like a duck at St. James’.”

They played on. Below they heard Rosie’s voice rise up in excited shouts—but fearless shouts, safe between her swimming vest and her Uncle Sherlie mere feet away. The gulls and the terns and the little running shore birds added their voices, high notes sounding over the roar of the surf.

“John, that’s your third pot. Are you cheating?”

“If you can’t tell, copper, I’m not telling you.” John grinned at Greg. “Your misfortune is luck to me. I'll put it toward my first month’s rent in that cottage in town that the Shadwells found for me.”

“Nice place?”

“Not so nice as here. But—truth? Probably better for me and Rosie. Near my work. Near enough to here to be in and out visiting all the time—not like London, where we spent half the free time we had trying to get to Baker Street in the first place."

“Why’d you move out?” Janine asked, then raised the bet by a full two pounds.

“Whew. Almost too rich for my blood! But, yeah—I’ll call. Moved out because I thought I found ‘the one.’ The first real hope since Mary…died. Don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like trying to get a snog in with Sherlock on the premises, but I promise you, it takes a genius to get laid if he’s there to cock-block. Crow? You got a bet?”

“If you can shut it long enough for a demon to make a move. See and raise.”

“Raise again,” Janine said, pushing in a full pound.

Crowley eyed her, as John saw the bet and called again. “Call.”

Janine took one. John took two. Crowley took two.

Janine smiled. “Straight flush.”

John and Crowley swore. Greg chuckled. Janine swept in her pot.

“You don’t think he’d be any better, now he’s older?” Greg asked.

“Not even with Janine fool enough to play footsie with him and keep his mind off me,” John said, as Janine started a new shuffle. “He can’t resist derailing my love life. I daresay he’d have ruined me and Mary, if he hadn’t fallen in love with her himself.” He looked apologetically at Janine. “Sorry. But there it is—I swear, you were rebound, and only because once he realized he could fall in love, he wanted to explore.”

“I thought that was all a ruse,” Greg said, frowning—and glancing with equal apology over at Sherlock’s once-and-current squeeze.

“Sherlock never does anything he doesn’t really want to do,” Janine said, with a smirk as smug a cat with wet whiskers sitting on the far side of the room from an empty aquarium. “Boy knew what he was doing…Or he did by the time I got done with him.”

The men all broke into a shout of laughter. Greg and John gasped, then, and forced it back, with muttered apologies. Crowley, however, continued to grin, offering her a fist-bump.

“Sistah! We shall have to talk…”

She arched a brow. “Yeah—I hear you play on both teams. Go us.”

Greg and John sputtered harder, and demon and semi-djinn smirked all the harder.

“Nut brown, Greg,” John said. “If you two deviants are done, then deal, eh? Some of us are here for poker.”

“Poke who?” Crowley said, making Janine giggle even as she made the cards dance. Crowley winked at her over his glasses.

The play continued. The money flowed back and forth. Crowley concluded that Greg played to lose strategically—just enough not to get caught. Just enough to keep John and Janine happy and feeling lucky. A good host. A smart copper. An interested witness to this new community forming around him.

“How long were you in MI6” he asked the other man, taking a gamble with his guesses as well as his cards.

“MI5, actually—but they seconded me to MI6 eventually.”

“Fussy, fussy, fussy. Jus’ another ‘arrangement.’ The things I could tell you about arrangements! How long?”

Greg’s eyes went vague for a moment, as he arranged his cards and tried to reckon years. “Fifteen years since I first met Sherlock. Seventeen since I met Mike. God. Almost twenty years.” He shivered. “Time flies.”

“Angels fly,” chimed in Janine.

“Yeah—Gabriel and his lot demonstrated,” Crowley said, sourly.

“No—look. Aziraphale,” she said, and pointed up in to the clear-blue and mackerel-streaked sky.

Crowley looked up.

High above…an angel.

White wings gleaming.

An angel in loose, pale trousers he might have snatched off Gene Kelly himself. Belt and braces—and was anyone surprised? Pale blue shirt fluttering in the breeze of his own passage.

“Oh,” said John, jaw dropping.

“Nothing ye’ve not seen before,” Crowley said—but his heart wasn’t in it. His eyes were fixed to the angel riding the updrafts. His face was longing. He rose, wings already materializing around him.

Greg caught his wrist. When the demon looked back, he said, softly, “No. Not yet. Not—this is his.”

It was easy to forget how stark and gaunt Crowley’s face could be—the sense of lean and hungry desperation disappeared in the constant flurry of expressive grimaces, flashing grins, arching eyebrows, and general dramatic clowning and melodrama. Now, though, it was still, caught between longing and understanding. He looked back up.

They all did, rising from the table to lean against the rail with the best view of sky and beach below.

“Hi, Uncle Angel!” Rosie’s voice was high and piping as she waved above.

Angel waved back. He looped the loop and did barrel rolls, as Rosie shrieked and cheered. Sherlock watched—those who knew him recognizing him in full observational mode, recording every detail even as he clutched the back straps of Rosie’s vest.

“What’s he doing now?” Janine asked, as the angel rose, rose, rose—and then dropped stooping to the sea, wings folded.

“Don’t know,” Crowley said, frowning.

“Dives like an osprey,” Greg murmured. “God, that’s pretty…”

“Yeah… Not sure why he's dropping, though,” Crowley mumbled. “Not like him.”

“Trouble?” John was worried.

“No—no fear…”

The angel sliced down into the water, barely raising a splash, disappearing into the waves.

“He’s all right?” Janine didn’t sound very sure.

“I think so.” Crowley sounded more sure. Not entirely sure—but more sure.

They waited, breath held. Then…

“Dolphins” shrieked Rosie. “Oh, look—dolphins!”

“Oh!” Janine gasped. “Look—look at Aziraphale!”

He darted up, dancing, surrounded by an entire pod of common dolphins, their dark backs and wave-marked ivory sides shining in the sun. The angel laughed back, wove in and out of the waves with them, stole their fish, tagged their tails, tumbled in the surf with them…

“Oh…” Crowley said. “Oh…” And then he was crying, tears flowing bright and clear from under dark classes. “Oh…Angel…” And though the others tried to move him, he would not move until the angel at last rose up, singing in a Celestial dialect long since lost to the mortals there, and remembered only with bitter-sweet longing by the demon among them. The dolphins sang back, their rusty, squealing tones full of joy as the angel wove harmonies among them as easily as he’d woven in and out of their pod formations.

And then they were gone, Angel sweeping toward the cottage on the downs, and the dolphins out to sea.

“Oh, Angel,” Crowley whispered, and would not have made it back to his seat at the poker table without gentle human hands to guide his arse safely to solid furnishings. “Oh…Angel.”

Greg went in, then, and came out with a bottle of single-malt and four glasses. He poured. “To the angel and the dolphins,” he said, and downed his shot…followed in kind by John and Janine—and, eventually, a blitzed, soul-shaken demon. When the glasses were empty, he poured out another round, then, in a voice that said a lot about years in command of his teams, he said, softly, “What’s all that about, Crows?”

Crowley’s face shifted, as though he were blinking behind his glasses. He cleared his throat. “He was…” He stopped. “I…I’ve never…” He tried again. “He doesn’t…”

“Slow, slow. Take your time. Think it through. Start at the beginning, go to the middle, finish with the end.”

Crowley snorted. “The beginning.” He considered. “Do you know—the first time I met him, he was worried, and I am damned if he hasn’t been worried every day since? Every. Immortal. Day. Trying so hard, my Angel. Working at it. I don’t ever think I’ve seen…” He considered. “I mean—he thinks performing bad magic tricks is fun. He thinks hanging out with a bad-tempered sarky, stroppy demon is fun. I’ve never…” He choked, shivered, gulped down the second shot and held out the glass for another refill. On getting it, he studied it. Then he said, “Six thousand years. Six thousand. He’s sweet as a crepe with sugar and butter. He’s fierce as a dragon protecting its eggs. He’s brave enough to defy Heaven and Hell and God herself to try to be good. But so help me, I have never seen him just…play.” His voice broke again. He steadied it.

“To my Angel, at play,” he finally managed.

The others joined his toast silently.

“Well,” John said, eventually. “That does make our little game seem a bit unambitious, doesn’t it?”

“Can’t all fly,” Greg pointed out. “Can’t all swim with the dolphins, or sing wi’ ‘em.”

“Hell of a thing to watch,” Janine said. Then, again, her eyes shining with wonder. “Hell of a thing. Rosie better grow up to be a saint or something, getting to watch that.”

“You leave her be,” Crowley grumbled. “It’s just Angel. I’ll tell him to keep it away from her if it turns her all pious and freaky.”

“Now, now,” John said. “I think she’s got a lot more stubborn mortality in her than that.” He snorted. “What she’s going to want is rides. And I’m betting it’s the demon, not the angel who’s going to give them to her.”

Crowley smacked him in the elbow—not all that gently. “Arse. Shut it, you clot.”

Greg laughed, and Janine grinned, and the sense of paradise too close upon them dissipated.

“Another hand?” John asked.

“One before I quit,” Greg said.

“Yeah—that’s about right,” Janine said—and proceeded to clean them out.

“I’ll save it for the wedding,” she said, pouring the proceeds into her cardigan pocket. “Money won on a day when you see an angel dance with the dolphins is good luck.”

“Like you’d know,” John snorted.

“Are you going to deny it?” she asked, seeming honestly curious.

He considered. “No. No…it does seem like a hell of an omen.”

“A _GOOD _omen,” Greg agreed.

“Yeah, maybe,” said Crowley. “But—she may be part archangel and part djinn—but I’d feel a whole lot more certain if her last name was ‘Nutter,’ or “Device.’”

And then he went home to hold his Angel, and breathe in the scent of ocean wind and salt water, of laughter and an angel singing.


End file.
